The present invention relates to the field of pain tracking. More specifically, the present invention provides a system that allows users, physicians and healthcare providers to track the location and intensity of pain over a period of time and then play back a historical representation of the user""s pain.
Physicians and healthcare providers must sort through and evaluate large amounts of information when diagnosing and treating patients with pain disorders. Typically a physician or healthcare provider asks a patient a series of questions to help diagnose the problem and may record certain information on a diagram of the human body. When a patient experiences different degrees of pain over a given period of time, it can be time consuming for the physician or healthcare provider to record all of the information. In addition to consuming a large amount of time, it can be difficult for the physician or healthcare provider to effectively analyze all of the information.
As the amount of information provided to a physician or healthcare provider increases, so does the probability that the physician or healthcare provider will overlook relevant symptoms or fail to recognize a correlation between a symptom and other information provided to the physician or healthcare provider. For example, if a physician or healthcare provider is diagnosing a patient who experiences stomach pain, it may be difficult for the physician or healthcare provider to notice that the patient usually experiences the stomach pain 18 hours after consuming a certain food additive. As a result, the physician or healthcare provider may order the patient to undergo tests that would not otherwise be necessary. Unnecessary tests can be expensive and prolong the time period in which a patient suffers from pain.
For the patient, it is difficult to recall the exact nature and location of pain, particularly if its occurrence happens over a long period of time. Specific periods or moments may be recalled, but details of its occurrence (e.g. time, date, place, etc), and variables (e.g. foods, medications, drugs, stress, sleep, etc) associated with it, before, during and after the occurrence of pain may go unnoticed. As this information is collected and combined with medical history recordsxe2x80x94both general and specific to the patient""s conditionxe2x80x94the patient and his/her physician or healthcare provider can make a more complete and effective diagnosis and treatment of the patient""s condition.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art for a system that allows physicians and healthcare providers to efficiently obtain pain information from patients (along with medical records) and that helps analyze and accurately display the obtained information in a manor that is meaningful to the user and/or the user""s physician or healthcare provider. There also exists a need in the art for a system that allows individuals to efficiently provide such pain information and corresponding medical information.
The present invention provides a system that allows users to record information regarding the location and intensity of pain. The system also allows the user to select information that he/she, with or without the advice of his/her physician or healthcare provider, wishes to track (e.g. foods eaten, medications, drugs, moods, settingxe2x80x94business/leisurexe2x80x94, or patient/user defined items). With the user""s approval, items could also be created by the user""s physician or healthcare provider. Additionally, the system can present questions to the user regarding the pain experienced by the user. Questions can be of a subjective (e.g. intensity of pain) and objective (e.g. number of hours slept) nature. Some of the questions presented to the user can be selected based on previous information provided by the user. The obtained information, along with any associated information provided by the user can be graphically displayed to a physician or healthcare provider in a manner that allows the physician or healthcare provider to quickly analyze large amounts of data.
The advantages of the present invention are provided by a method of obtaining and displaying pain information. The method includes the steps receiving from a user a first set of pain information including the location and intensity of pain experienced by a user during a first time period and receiving from the user a second set of pain information including the location and intensity of pain experienced by the user during a second time period. A moving sequence of images is generated that shows changes in the pain information over time.
Pain intensity can be divided into several different levels and the images can display colors corresponding to the pain intensity levels.
The steps of receiving the first and second sets of pain information can include providing at least one diagram of the human body with an overlying grid.